A trip of many celebrations! (5/24 to 5/28 at Park MGMl

I remember the day when I was able to walk the strip without thinking about it.

Now I’m doing more thinking about ways to not do so much walking i.e. the tram, the monorail, Lyft and one day probably a scooter. But I have forty years on you. Anyway keep having fun and making memories!!!

 

It’s not a Vegas trip for me until I have a lobster roll at LobsterMe. They definitely don’t scrimp on the lobster, and it’s a quick easy lunch.

 

Trust me, even at 21 my body is feeling the effects of all this walking, it’s just able to recover a little quicker. That’s the “being young” advantage I guess.

 

Lazy start to the day. We got up and walked over to Aria and had a small breakfast at the patisserie before heading over to the spa where we both had appointments for massages. All of the amenities are open (yay!), so we spent the last few hours enjoying those and now and going to lave a late-ish lunch at Eataly.

 

Had lunch at Eataly and then walked to Aria for gelato. I had Cacio e Pepe which was up to the standard I would expect and very filling. I'm not exactly sure what my friend got, but I'm including a picture in case someone does. It looked and smelled great.

We're seeing Tapeface at Harrah's tonight, so we're starting to make our way in that direction.

 

On our way to Harrah's, we cut through Bellagio and I snapped a pic of the "work in progress" conservatory.

From there we went to Flamingo and spent some time at the habitat. We had a great time watching the ducks in particular and even got to seen some ducklings! They came very close to us and were being watched over by the mama duck, the whole thing was adorable.

From there we walked to Harrah's where we saw Tapeface. The show was fantastic! The audience was great sports when they were called up to participate which made the show even batter. I definitely recommend it if you like his style of comedy.

 

Glad you were able to play Britney for yourself! It was much more available when you were 16; it's not an easy slot to find now. There might be a few other places on the Strip that may have it, but Cosmo is the only place that I KNOW has it. Of all the themed slots, it's one of the best ones I've done on. I'm ahead in a very tiny sample. I probably should give it another go next trip; it's been a few years. I barely play slots. Haha

 

Nice TR. It looks like your trip is hitting on all cylinders with great food, drinks, pool, slots and fun with your friend. That’s the way to do Vegas. Have fun winding up your trip and congrats on the scholarship.

 

Thanks! It was a priority for us to get the most out of this trip, and I think I can safely say we’ve done that.

 

Ok, let's see where I left off last night.
After the show we walked over to Ceasars for dinner.

We ate at Gordon Ramsay Pub and Grill where I got the spinach dip and thr shrimp and lobster rolls.

I was halfway through eating the dip when I remembered to take a pic, it looks a lot nicer, and has more pita chips(?) (Not sure what they actually were) when they serve it to you. My friend had the three course meal which which included a ceaser salad, the beef wellington, and the toffee pudding. I forgot to take pictures of her food, but she said everything was delicious. We shared the toffee pudding and I can say for myself that all the hype around it is definitely true, it's one of the best desserts I've ever ate. Both of us walked out of there very happy and full. I will say though, it's very loud in there due both to loud music and being directly inside the casino, definitely not the place to go if you're looking for to have meaningful conversation with your meal.
From there we decided to take a taxi back to Park MGM because we agreed our legs felt "like jelly" and didn't really feel like walking back. On the way put of Ceasars, we walked past Amalfi, and it was shockingly empty. Now it was around 9:30 at this point so past "peak" dinner time, but for a brand new, highly anticipated restaurant, I would have expected to see more than 7 tables filled.
Our cab driver back from Ceasars was great as well. While trying to pull onto the strip from Ceasars, we sat in traffic for all of 30 seconds before he turned around and took us back on Frank Sinatra Dr. I only point this out because it would've been much easier, and more lucrative for him to sit in the traffic with the meter running, but instead he chose to get us back faster, even though it resulted in a lower fare.
We pretty much crashed as soon as we got back to the room, all of the activity from the last few days is finally starting to take its toll on us. I did look at some table minimums in Park MGM on our way through the casino last night and spitting both $15 craps and $15 blackjack, though I didn't take note of the odds.

 

Things are starting to wind down for us.
We had lunch at The Wicked Spoon. Thank God I had the foresight to make reservations, because the wait for walk-ins was over 90 minutes.
I was happy yet unimpressed with the buffet. I'm one of those people that absolutelyove a buffet and want to eat as much as possible while I there. That said, I'm happy because I was able to have my fill of snow crab legs, my all time favorite food. Two plates full, one normal (for me) portion and one "small" portion. I honestly could've kept going with them but I wanted to try some other things.

Now, this is why I say I'm unimpressed with the buffet. Outside of the "weird" foods and premium offerings like prime rib (which my friend had two servings of) I felt there was a real lack of options. I was only able to find two other plates of food (not counting dessert) after the crab. Personally, I'd rather go to a slightly lower quality buffet but have more to choose from.
I did think their dessert offerings were great though. Even the things I don't like looked like they would've been really good. I had a molten chocolate lava cake, creme brulee, a chocolate covered donut (which had chocolate in it too!), a chocolate cupcake, and a sugar cookie. The stand outs were the lava cake and creme brulee, though the donut was really good too. I thought the cookie was average and didn't like the cupcake, but that was more a personal preference situation than it being bad. My friend had their gelato for dessert and liked it so much she went back for seconds.

 

Time got away from me a bit yesterday, so now that I'm home and rested, I'm going to wrap up the last bit of this trip report.
After lunch we decided we would make our way down to Luxor for the Titanic exhibit, luckily the tram was running since it was a weekend. On our way there though, we ended up changing our minds and went to the aquarium at Mandalay Bay instead. I can't compare the two since I've never been to Luxor's Titanic exhibit, but we had a good time at the aquarium.

From there, we slowly started making our way back in the direction of Park MGM. We ended up stopping at the Coca-Cola store, where I got a float. For me, this is one of those "I could absolutely make this at home" items that I associate with Vegas.

The store was also giving free nachos with every purchase since they were getting ready to close the snack area. They were basic movie theater-style nachos, but they were free and a good enough snack. From there we went back to Park MGM where we hung out for a bit before deciding to leave for the airport early in order to beat any possible traffic from the hockey game happening at the arena. I'm not sure how long after we left the game ended, but we definitely avoided the traffic.
Security took longer than it should have with the line not being that long because one of the machines broke down and they had to move everybody from that line into another line (and of course I was in the line where the machine broke). Things moved relatively quickly barring that though.
Since I forgot to take one of these on the way in, I snapped one on the way out:

Flight was "delayed" for about half an hour because we had to wait for the in-flight crew to get to the plane. I put the quotes around delayed because it was an official, on-the-board delay, it was just a matter of the crew getting there, and we landed when we were supposed to anyway. The actual flight was uneventful, I slept through most of it, with it being a red-eye. Though they did keep the lights in the cabin on for about half the flight, which made it hard to get any good sleep.

Final thoughts: It was a great trip, I did everything I planned on doing and then some. I definitely see another trip in my future, maybe a shorter weekend trip. I'd like next time I go to be when things are fully back to "normal" meaning no limited hours. We're getting there, but I think that will be crucial to my next trip since the very few things I didn't do were for that reason. Anyway, this wraps up my very first trip report, thanks for reading along!

 

Loved your trip report. I've never done one but realize the amount of time and commitment to write one is very time consuming. Looks like you had a fun trip and did lots of things I've never done. Good luck in your studies and will be looking forward to your next report. Great job!

 

I really like the MB aquarium and always recommend it when people ask me what there is to do in Vegas besides gamble. Thank you for your report, sounds like it was a fun trip!

 

After drinking those shakes, the only walk I would take is straight to the nearest cardiologist's office!!!

 

Awesome trip report. You could have fooled me that this was your very first trip report.This was fantastic. Well done!!

 

great report and congrats on the numerous thing you and your friend were celebrating